The Smallest Minority

The Smallest Minority
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. - MaxedOutMama I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. Kim du Toit
I am Simon Jester . . . and so are you Wahabism Delenda Est Hey, FEC! BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION! "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.) email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 6 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003! An Invitation to My Readers Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Mystery of Government The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once The George Orwell Daycare Center This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming The Culture Trilogy Culture Hubris Weltanschauung And its follow-on: In Re: Culture Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience? BLOGROLL: PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle The Adventures of Roberta X TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club Boobs, Injuries, and Dr. Pepper The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Kim du Toit Personal Effects Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel Mrs. Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Gun Nuts Media Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean Found: One Troll FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hecate's Crossroad Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Live from the (upper) Texas Gulf Coast Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET A Keyboard and a .45 AIM Blog Another Gun Blog The Armed Schoolteacher Bitter of The Bitch Girls Cowboy Blob Captain of a Crew of One damnum absque injuria Dave Kopel Days of our Trailers GreatBlueWhale Gun Pundit GunTruth Kim du Toit Mrs. du Toit The Mad Duck Michael Bane Rustmeister's Alehouse Serenity Sharp as a Marble Snowflakes in Hell Smoke on the Water Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Gun Nuts Media On the Patio Phil and Dave of Random Nuclear Strikes Fodder of Ride Fast & Shoot Straight Rivrdog Say Uncle View From the Porch Walls of the City JimmyB, The Conservative UAW Guy Engineering Johnson KeeWee Yosemite Sam and Denise from The Ten Ring The Unforgiving Minute Mr. Completely Og the Neanderpundit USCitizen of Traction Control World Examiner Joe Huffman Chris & Mel John and Beth Donovan The Packing Rat Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell DirtCrashr of Anthroblogogy Rob of The Kitchen Maj. Chuck Ziegenfuss of From My Position... On the Way! Matthew of Triggerfinger Sarah of Carnaby Fudge KevinP who maintains this excellent Wikipedia entry on the Joyce Foundation Dave Hardy Clayton Cramer Engineer-Poet Primeval Papa FURRINERS Kiwi Pundit The Policeman's Blog Free Market Fairy Tales Samizdata Musing The Second Version The Last of the Few The Inside Edge Jigsaw's Thoughts OTHER GOOD READS Baby Troll Blog The Winds of Change Sense of Events The Everlasting Phelps Knowledge is Power QandO Blog Radio Blogger Rachel Lucas Mad Rocket Scientist THE PSYCHE BRIGADE Dr. Sanity Dr. Helen One Cosmos ShrinkWrapped Neo-Neocon Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred OTHER AZ BLOGS Useful Fools Zonitics Jackalope Pursuivant Primeval Papa Oxypolitis Arizona Rifleman A Gator in the Desert DEPT. OF OUR COLLAPSING SCHOOLS Joanne Jacobs EducatioNation Teacher, Teacher The Irascible Professor OTHERS KIND ENOUGH TO BLOGROLL ME Adding to the Noise America's North Shore Journal Anthroblogogy Atomic Nerds Baboon Pirates Bad Dogs and Such The Bastidge Black & Right Blognomicon Benevolent Misanthropy (Ian Hamet) Charming, Just Charming Chublogga! Classical Values Common Sense and Wonder Combs Spouts Off Conservative Scalawag The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns damnum absque injuria David Drake Digital Retrograde The Dougout The Emigre with a Digital Cluebat Empire of Dirt Ether Mind The Fabulous Mint 400 The Freeholder Heinleinblog Impearls Interested-Participant Isaac Schrödinger Josh's Weblog Keith Devens Kill Righty Libertopia Liberal Morality The Liberty Zone The Liberty Papers Living in the Surreal World Mike's Eyes Miss O'Hara The Mind of Mog The Ministry of Minor Perfidy MonkeyWatch Adam Lawson NashvilleFiles Near the Salty City PervasiveLight Pierre Legrand's Pink Flamingo Bar Practical Penumbra The Passing Parade Right As Usual Rough Diamond Rules for Rulers Sharp as a Marble She Who Will Be Obeyed! The Speculist Sperari Striderweb A Trainwreck in Maxwell The Warren Warthog's Rants Wasted Electrons Wheels within Wheels Wicked Thoughts Tucson Bloggers Powered By Ringsurf	Friday, March 26, 2004 Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection (I don't have time for this, but...) Mr. Free Market reports on another case where doing that resulted in the unnecessary death of a citizen. Doing a little Googling, I found this report on the case: This frail ex-soldier was killed minutes after dialling 999 - but the police failed to respond Sandy Clark was in fear of his life from a criminal with a violent record, yet as Daniel Foggo reports, his call for help was given the lowest possible status Police failed to respond to pleas for help from a disabled Army veteran who dialed 999 minutes before he was brutally murdered in his own home. The operator at West Mercia police who took the call decided no action was required, even though it was the third time that day that Alexander "Sandy" Clark had told officers of his fears about the man who killed him. Mr Clark, 63, who lived alone in Worcester, told the operator that he was being pursued by a man who had already stolen from him and who had stated, in an angry telephone call, his intention to come to his home and confront him. Instead of help being sent, Mr Clark was told simply to keep his door shut and dial 999 again if the man materialised. The call was officially logged as having the lowest possible status. About 20 minutes later, Mr Clark was brutally beaten to death by Martin Rauwley, a career criminal who was the subject of Mr Clark's frantic calls. Rauwley, 39, got into Mr Clark's home and savagely beat him with his own walking stick, stabbing him to death with the fragments of the stick when it broke. His body lay undiscovered for more than 24 hours. Mr. Clark's assailant didn't need a (prohibited) firearm or a (prohibited) knife to kill Mr. Clark. But Mr. Clark was denied the only weapon with which a frail 63 year-old man might defend himself from a strong, healthy 39 year-old assailant. Mr Clark's son Mark and daughter Andrée believe that the police decision effectively to ignore their father's call cost him his life. There's more to it than just the police dispatcher's decision. It's a long, long chain of things. But remember, the State isn't responsible for protecting any specific individual, just the public at large. Although Mr Clark died two years ago, full details of his attempts to get help before his death have now been released by his family. They did not emerge at the trial of Rauwley, who had a string of previous convictions for fraud and violence. He was jailed for life for Mr Clark's murder in October 2002. On the day of his death, March 4, 2002, Mr Clark spoke to West Mercia police three times about his concerns about Rauwley. The two had met in a pub and become friendly, but two days earlier, Rauwley had stolen some of Mr Clark's military medals. Mr Clark dialed 999 on March 2 to report the theft and was subsequently visited by officers. Mr Clark first called 999 on March 4 at 10.53am to relate that Rauwley had pushed a note through his letterbox saying he was looking for him. The police later rang Mr Clark back but since Rauwley had not appeared, no more was done. That afternoon, however, Rauwley telephoned Mr Clark and they argued about the medals. At 4.29pm, Mr Clark called 999 again and had a conversation lasting several minutes. Finishing the call, the operator assessed it as "grade four", the lowest of the possible levels of response. It meant that the operator judged that no police presence was required. Mr Clark was on his own. Within minutes, Rauwley had entered Mr Clark's home and was beating the former soldier to death in his bedroom. Mr Clark, who had served 22 years in the Signal Corps, was suffering from a severe form of spinal rheumatism, Parkinson's disease and a heart condition. He was no match for his then 37-year-old attacker. Rauwley left having pocketed some more of his victim's possessions. CCTV footage later showed him walking along a nearby street at 5.10pm. Mr Clark's body lay undiscovered for more than 24 hours. Boy, those CCTV cameras really prevent crime don't they? Rauwley, a drug-taking career criminal with convictions for fraud and violence, was quickly caught and convicted. When Mr Clark's family were told by the police of their father's 999 calls, Mark and Andrée asked to see the transcripts. They were allowed to view them at police headquarters on the understanding that they could take no copies. Andrée, 43, said: "Reading them I could tell dad was scared and Mark felt the same." Apparently there's no Freedom of Information Act analog in the UK. Why am I not surprised? The brother and sister engaged a solicitor, Stephen Lodge, who arranged for them to view the transcripts again. On this second viewing, however, they appeared different. "The second time we got no impression that he was frightened," said Mark, 39. "It was like there was something missing." Penny Fishwick, a solicitor for West Mercia police, explained the discrepancy in a letter to the Clarks' solicitor. She said that after listening to the tapes with a colleague "I requested a few minor amendments with a view to improving the accuracy of the transcript. Riiiiiight. I believe that. Unsatisfied, Mark and Andrée asked for Mr Lodge to get access to the tapes of the 999 calls. This he was eventually allowed to do, but only after signing an undertaking not to let Mr Clark's family have access to them, to spare them the distress of hearing their father's voice in his final minutes. More mysterious, however, was an admission from the police that the beginning of the last, and crucial, call had disappeared. That didn't work for Nixon, why do they think it'll work here? In a letter to Mr Lodge dated August 14, 2003, Miss Fishwick said: "I have just listened to this [final] tape and noted that the first three lines of the conversation are missing. I am sorry about this but I doubt that the first three lines are in any way controversial." But we'll never know, will we? After hearing the tapes, Mr Lodge said that notwithstanding the missing beginning of the tape, the transcripts appeared accurate. He has since moved to another firm of solicitors and his replacement has stated that he sees no point in pursuing the police. And there isn't. They cannot be held responsible, as I've previously made clear. Mark and Andrée, however, are anything but satisfied. "Now I suspect we will never know the full story since a part of the tape had just disappeared, which we find extraordinary," said Andrée. "I believe this case raises issues over matters such as the police's response to calls from vulnerable people. "We feel, however, that West Mercia's response has been arrogant. When we managed to get a meeting with a senior policeman he told us that all the policing would be done exactly the same given the same circumstances again." Yet the UK government requires its subjects to depend on the government for their protection exclusively. And they cannot seem to understand why the violent crime rate in Britain is higher than in the the U.S. or the rest of Europe. "We would still like to sue," she said, "and I will be writing to the Police Complaints Authority to take this matter further. We will not let it drop." A spokesman for West Mercia said last week: "Following the death of Mr Clark, the grading of his calls to the police was reviewed. That review showed that the manner in which these calls were graded was appropriate in the light of the circumstances of the time. No formal complaint has been received by the force." Thanks for the pointer, Mr. Free Market. And if the link works, read this article about the frustration of crime victims in England over the inability of the police to do anything effective. Read this one, too. Now, back to work. \| posted by Kevin at 11:48 AM PermaLink HOME